Three weeks ago, I had no idea who Knuffle Bunny was. Then one of our loyal readers and DonorsChoose philanthropists, requested the Mo Willems’ book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.” Minnow seemed enthusiastic about the pigeon book, but when I opened up its Amazon page, she got really excited about another book by the same author.

One trip to the public library later, we came home with a book that we’d read 5 times before making it out of the library building. I think she must have read the book at her former daycare, but no matter where the source of her knowledge, Minnow was more than happy to help me record a video of “Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale” by Mo Willems.

(Not in the habit of watching the videos? This one features Minnow’s adorable interpretation of baby talk.)

While we were at the library, we also discovered a book that made Minnow shout with glee. It turns out that Knuffle Bunny has a sequel, “Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.” And Minnow was only too happy to help me make a video of this one too.

I don’t know how he does it but Willems managed to create two books that appeal to kids while capturing the very real emotions and antics of their parents. The scene where Trixie’s daddy tries to explain what 2:30 am means is priceless.

After reading the books ~20 times in the first day, Minnow decided that she and I both needed our own Knuffle Bunnies. Fortunately, we had two plus rabbits already in our household, so they got lots of love and attention for the next two days.

But the real Knuffle in our house isn’t a bunny at all. Rather the Knuffle Bunny of Minnow’s heart is a plush dog by the name of Bobbie. Bobbie is the lovey that Minnow’s parents decided she should adopt, and it worked like a charm. The name comes from a daycare teacher’s corruption of 1-year-old Minnow saying “puppy” in reference to her toy.

There’s another little secret about Bobbie – she’s got an identical twin. Wise souls had warned us to procure a duplicate lovey and make sure that both twins got equal love, so that if one went missing, we’d have an identical replacement ready. We followed their advice and for months we fastidiously made sure that the Bobbies were never in each other’s presence for fear of a similarity collapse. In a two-story house this was usually accomplished by having one Bobbie upstairs and the other downstairs, and the occasional tossing of a Bobbie over the stair railing.

But the inevitable happened, much like in the Knuffle Bunny. One day, at age 2.5, Minnow discovered that her unique, one-of-a-kind Bobbie was not so unique and one-of-a-kind. I experienced a Moment. Of. Terror.

And then Minnow announced happily, “Another Bobbie,” set the two dogs together on her beanbag and continued playing. Since then, there have been occasional instances of two Bobbies, but much like the Large Hadron Collider, their simultaneous operation has not caused the world to end.

Comments

Wow, we just picked up the Korean version of that book for our son. The name “Knuffle Bunny” has been changed to “Ggomeu Toki”, since saying Knuffle in Korean is about as difficult as saying Ggomeu in English.

We’ve got three blue puppies. Unfortunately, at some point, the original started to smell and feel special. Now we have one very well-loved puppy called Ruffy, and two identical (and much cleaner) puppies named Ruff and Ruff.

If Ruffy ever disappears, I’m still worried that the universe may explode.

We purchased a second Dark Monkey (we the parents did NOT name this one!) with the intent of letting our little guy give them equal love…but never got around to it. So, when the inevitable happened and Dark Monkey opted for a spontaneous overnight at a friend’s house we slipped the replacement in. This was met, after an initial moment of glee, with our 2-year-old son’s long and calculated examination of the replacement and the following proclamation, uttered as he handed the counterfeit back to me: “this one is fuzzy. I want the other one.”

For those who are wondering–the universe did not explode. The newly named chocolate monkey was allowed to stand in.